Related papers: Expect the unexpected: augmented mixture models fo…
Mixture models are widely used in modeling heterogeneous data populations. A standard approach of mixture modeling assumes that the mixture component takes a parametric kernel form. In many applications, making parametric assumptions on the…
Dynamically assembled binary black holes are expected to retain measurable orbital eccentricity in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA band, but most parameter estimation analyses still assume quasi-circular inspirals. This raises a critical question: how…
The LIGO Scientific, Virgo and KAGRA Collaborations recently released the third gravitational wave transient catalog or GWTC-3, significantly expanding the number of gravitational wave (GW) signals. To address the -- still uncertain --…
Measurements of multiple harmonic modes in the gravitational wave signals from binary black hole events could provide an accurate test of general relativity, however they have never been observed before. The sub-dominant modes, other than…
We report on advances to interpret current and future gravitational-wave events in light of astrophysical simulations. A machine-learning emulator is trained on numerical population-synthesis predictions and inserted into a Bayesian…
Recent detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes opened new possibilities to study the evolution of massive stars and black hole formation. In particular, stellar evolution models may be constrained on the basis of…
The origin of the Binary Black Hole (BBH) mergers detected through Gravitational Waves (GWs) by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration remains debated. One fundamental reason is our ignorance of their host environment, as the typical size…
Orbit superposition models are a non-parametric dynamical modelling technique to determine the mass of a galaxy's central supermassive black hole (SMBH), its stars, or its dark-matter halo. One of the main problems is how to decide which…
The environment surrounding supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei (GNs) is expected to harbour stellar-mass binary black hole (BBH) populations. These binaries were suggested to form a hierarchical triple system with the SMBH,…
The detection of orbital eccentricity for a binary black hole system via gravitational waves is a key signature to distinguish between the possible binary origins. The identification of eccentricity has been difficult so far due to the…
We introduce a novel black hole mass function which realistically models the physics of star formation and pair instability supernova with a minimal number of parameters. Applying this to all events in the LIGO-Virgo GWTC-2 catalog, we…
From the formation mechanisms of stars and compact objects to nuclear physics, modern astronomy frequently leverages surveys to understand populations of objects to answer fundamental questions. The population of dark and isolated compact…
Vamana is a mixture model framework that infers the astrophysical distribution of chirp mass, mass ratio, and spin component aligned with the orbital angular momentum for the binary black hole population. We extend the mixing components in…
Detecting gravitational waves from coalescing compact binaries allows us to explore the dynamical, nonlinear regime of general relativity and constrain modifications to it. Some of the gravitational-wave events observed by the LIGO-Virgo…
The degree of black-hole spin-orbit misalignment ("tilts") in the astrophysical population could be a powerful diagnostic to distinguish between binary formation in isolation, in dynamical environments, or in hierarchical triples. However,…
We perform a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of the GWTC-2 catalog to investigate the mixed scenario in which the merger events are explained by black holes of both astrophysical and primordial origin. For the astrophysical scenario we adopt…
The origin of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo remains an open question. While the unusual mass and spin of a few events constrain their possible astrophysical formation mechanisms, it is difficult to classify the bulk of…
LISA should detect gravitational waves from tens to hundreds of systems containing black holes with mass in the range from 10 thousand to 10 million solar masses. Black holes in this mass range are not well constrained by current…
We introduce the Merger Entropy Index ($\mathcal{I}_\mathrm{BBH}$), a new parameter to measure the efficiency of entropy transfer for any generic binary black hole merger in General Relativity. We find that $\mathcal{I}_\mathrm{BBH}$ is…
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA catalog has been analyzed with an abundance of different population models due to theoretical uncertainty in the formation of gravitational-wave sources. To expedite model exploration, we introduce an efficient and…